North Korean artists do paintings of contemporary China as a socialist utopia

For their exhibition The Beautiful Future at Beijing Design Week, Nick Bonner and Dominic Johnson-Hill commissioned paintings of modern China from North Korean artists. The results were these remarkable pictures. At first glance they have the naivety of 1950s Americana, but on further examination, they seem to have been purposefully composed to capture a national narrative of cognitive dissonance. Several of the paintings feature Chinese architectural triumphs of recent years. These buildings loom from the fantasylandscapes of golden wheat fields as they are admired by workers harvesting produce.